


No Small Duty

by PoorQueequeg



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Feels, Hux POV, In which an odious character is portrayed somewhat less odiously than he might otherwise be, Unrequited, repost, sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 20:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12638922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorQueequeg/pseuds/PoorQueequeg
Summary: She won't kiss him, he knows, knows that it would be the end of him even if he longs for it.





	No Small Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted garbage.

Hux is wondering if he might start to learn to trust Ren a little more, wonders if he might be starting to believe in something greater than what he'd believed in before. An ultimate reality, the mysteries of the Force, the mysteries of the Human heart.

 

His erstwhile colleague is away now, sent by the Supreme Leader he knows not where on some task of great import. It would have to be, for Ren to leave his most prized possession and Hux likewise considers it a duty of no small importance that it has been left to his care. Hux thinks he understands now, just why Ren had behaved as he has, why he was willing to pay such a high price to acquire a thing as precious and rare. He thinks now he might also have done the same, if it meant that she would look at him the way she gazes at Kylo Ren, knows for certain he would look at her just the same way that Kylo Ren gazes back.

 

She sits beneath the window in his chambers, a softly cushioned, hand carved chaise beneath her and a tableau of glittering stars as her backdrop. They are not alone, assorted ranking officers lingering around the dinner table gazing at this creature with the same kind of misty eyed reverence he's seen on Kylo Ren's face.

 

The girl...a woman really, soft curves beneath an elegant black dress, sits with those eyes twinkling like the stars outside. In her hands she has an instrument she constructed herself, put together from bits of scrap reclaimed from the hangar bay. Another odd request for Ren's odd apprentice, or so Hux had thought at the time. They'd barely spoken then, she was just this strange slip of a thing shrouded by a hooded robe, skin hidden beneath long black arm wraps and her eyes veiled beneath thick dark hair. He's watched her over the months, observing as the oddments of old engines became something more than they were before, to become this instrument she now holds in her hands. It is a beautiful thing, gleaming with the polish and lacquer of First Order technology. A small black box with a long neck and a single string, a bow fashioned from synthetic cords and a piece of a support strut from a TIE fighter. Such beauty from machines designed for war, the symbolism is not lost on Hux.

 

“I thought you grew up in the desert?” he'd asked her once as she sat in his lounge.

 

“I did,” she'd told him before growing quiet, distracted by the arrival of a small feline body on the couch beside her. Hux had watched on approvingly as she'd petted his little friend, gazing at the cat with envious eyes as she'd padded brazenly across the girl's lap and stretched up to rub her whiskers against the girl's jaw. Rey smiled and blinked at the cat, pouting at it as she stroked through the soft fuzz on its cheeks. This was, he suspected, the real reason that she accepted his invitations to tea, not that he minded since he himself has the same weakness for that small, furry face.

 

“You wonder how I learned to play?” she queried after a minute. Hux blinked and gave a slight nod. Ren's apprentice smiled but her eyes betrayed a melancholy that even a man like Hux could recognize. “I don't know, I just...let it come to me,” she said wistfully, those sad eyes going out of focus. “I...feel it, flowing around me like a current.” Hux took a breath and held it, feeling something tug at him deep inside.

 

“Ren says it is the Force,” he said, swallowing around the lump in his throat and his heart seeming to go still as he met her eyes. “That it speaks through you.” Rey blushed and dropped her gaze.

 

“Perhaps,” she said with the softest of smiles.

 

He cannot help but think Ren might be right, as he watches her now. He leans back in his seat and sips a brandy, his limbs heavy with that warm satiation of a good meal and good wine, and he thinks, in no small part, good company. His colleagues agree, he is certain of it, as he lets his gaze drift across the sleepy eyed expressions of their dinner companions while she plays. It is a strange, haunting sound, at once hopeful and yet sad, lonely like the girl. For some reason, he ardently hopes that she isn't so lonely any longer.

 

He looks at her now, her arms and shoulders bare, the rest of her hidden beneath a form fitting black dress that comes to ankles that peek out beneath the hem. He admires her feet for a moment: lets his gaze travel up the shape of her legs beneath her skirt; tracks the swell of her hip and the narrow curve of her waist; her compact but shapely bust; that long, elegant neck and the single glittering gem that hangs around it. And above it all, that face, lips he longs to kiss and eyes, sad and wide and endlessly deep. Hux wonders if Ren is gentle with her, wonders if he mindlessly ravages her like the monster he seems, or if the Master of Ren makes loves to her like he would. And oh, how he would. Hux lets his mind wander for a moment, a fantasy of them together, sickening really for a military man, all hearts and flowers and rose petals on the bed but by the Force, he would do anything, everything for her if she was his. He thinks he might do it even if she is not.

 

Her fingers dance across the single string, the bow she made gliding elegantly and incessantly back and forth at its base as the soft sound of the song she plays drifts around the dining room. None of the pieces have names or notation, every melody invented during the long, lonely years of her exile. His heart constricts at the thought of what she must have endured, how anyone could abandon such a creature in a wilderness like that.

 

His eyes fix on the stone at her neck, his fingers tightening around his glass as he wonders what Ren will think, what Ren might do when he finds that the man he has entrusted his beloved apprentice to is lavishing her with gifts. Jewels and gowns and sumptuous dinners with a dozen different courses and at least as many wines but Hux understands better now, what drives the wayward Master of Ren. He cannot blame the man for wanting her, cannot fault him for throwing every resource at his disposal at his single minded pursuit of her. Hux thinks of the scarred and bleeding wreck he'd rescued from the woods, of the vast pool of blood that stained the snow and wonders if the girl knows quite what she cost him, what she cost them all.

 

Wonders if she knows that she was worth it.

 

He finishes his brandy as she finishes her piece, meeting her gentle eyes and returning her soft smile even if he knows those eyes will never look on him the way she looks on Kylo Ren. Their small audience applaud, the men rising from their chairs as she rises from the couch, tripping over themselves to take her hand and pull out her chair and refill her glass. Hux lets himself bask in the warm, satisfied feeling as she retreats to the safety of his side, how she lets him drape a stole around her shoulders and takes his arm as she bids their companions goodnight.

 

 

She won't kiss him, he knows, knows that it would be the end of him even if he longs for it. He cannot help but wonder what Kylo Ren would do to her, if the Master of Ren could ever truly bring himself to harm her even if he knows his own life would end in the most agonizing and horrendous way. Still as they linger outside her door, she cups his jaw and looks him in the eye and he cannot help but think that it would be worth it.

 


End file.
